Europe's largest sports loyalty programme, Reward, helps fans bring down the cost of their sporting passions by rewarding them for using participating retailers. Founded just four years ago by CEO Gavin Dein it now represents more than 30 sports organisations - mainly football - and is on target for half a million online members by the end of the year.

Emails are the main way of communicating with fan members but when Email Reaction was brought in, in October 2004, Reward was still publishing them using a software package sitting on one of their desktops and using an Outlook server for delivery.

Solid, stable and scalable solutions
Email Reaction was chosen, according to Reward's Marketing Director, Ashton Atkinson-Hope, primarily because of its reputation for delivering "solid, stable and scalable solutions" and its ability to provide a system capable of handling the demands of communicating with a potential audience of sports fans running into millions.

An important part of Email Reaction's brief was meeting the challenges posed by the fortnightly fan newsletter. This had to contain certain generic content but also be automatically branded to the recipient supporter's club - with minimum effort and no human error - by integrating Reward's database with Email Reaction's publishing system. "Can you imagine the disaster of sending a Liverpool FC newsletter to an Everton fan?"

Integrating data with SOAP API
The key to the solution has been Email Reaction's SOAP API. From the moment new members sign up they get an automated welcome email delivered by Email Reaction, using information directly updated from Reward's database, which triggers customised communications.

Reward has also benefited from Email Reaction's reporting system - "a fantastic little tool" according to Atkinson-Hope. By referring to the simple visual summaries of click-throughs and open rates, his marketing team can assess what really works and refine content and templates accordingly. "The professional nature of report and ease of export allows us to provide club marketing, commercial directors and retail partners with a snapshot of activity."

The outcome has been a 50% increase in click-throughs and open rates. In just two months, Reward saw a 200% increase in sales taking place through their network. "The increase in sales reflects the holistic effect of overall improvement to copy, design and offers all aided by the Email Reaction suite."

Reward also sees the value of the more sophisticated aspects of Email Reaction's system, introducing personalisation into the copy and product sections using dynamic message assembly built by the Email Reaction system. So, for example, someone who has shown a lot of interest in DVDs, either by clicks or purchases, will be sent more DVD offers.

Confident of future with Email Reaction
"All the basics that I wanted: stability, scalability and the ability to personalise on a club basis have been achieved," says Atkinson-Hope. "The next challenge for us is to introduce more features, or improved content and segmented campaigns. We also want to use Email Reaction capabilities to test more - subject lines, days of week etc - on a club by club basis and I have total confidence that Email Reaction can do that for us as well.

Atkinson-Hope is also very complimentary about the intelligent back-up offered by Email Reaction, such as their knowledge about dealing with the "quirks" of emailing a large number of Hotmail and AOL users. "I've been very impressed and become a big fan of the quality of their customer support team," he says. "They are a very knowledgeable bunch and always very quick to offer solutions."

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